London, Jan 3 (IANS): Egyptian officials warned human rights barrister Amal Clooney that she risked arrest after she identified some serious flaws in the country's judicial system that subsequently contributed to the conviction of three Al-Jazeera journalists now jailed in Cairo.
In an interview with the Guardian after the appeal hearing of the journalists this week, Clooney, a lawyer for one of the trio, said they were victims of the same flaws that she earmarked in a February 2014 report about Egyptian courts.
Written before Clooney became involved in the Al-Jazeera case, officials deemed the report so controversial that they threatened her team with arrest should they have tried to present its findings inside Egypt.
“When I went to launch the report, first of all they stopped us from doing it in Cairo,” Clooney told The Guardian.
“They said: ‘Does the report criticise the army, the judiciary, or the government?’ We said: ‘Well, yes.’ They said: ‘Well then, you’re risking arrest.’”
The report, compiled on behalf of the International Bar Association, said Egypt’s judicial system was not as independent as it could be.
It pointed out that officials in the ministry of justice have wide powers over nominally independent judges, and highlighted the control the government can exert over state prosecutors.
Among other recommendations, Clooney and her co-authors suggested ending the practice that allows Egyptian officials to handpick judges for certain politicised cases.
“That recommendation wasn’t followed, and we’ve seen the results of that in this particular case where you had a handpicked panel led by a judge who is known for dispensing brutal verdicts,” Clooney said.
The three journalists -- Mohamed Fahmy, whom Clooney represents, Peter Greste and Baher Mohamed -- were initially sentenced to between seven and 10 years in jail last June by Egyptian judge Mohamed Nagy Shehata.
Shehata became notorious during the trial for rarely taking off his aviator sunglasses, mocking Fahmy’s fiancee, and for cracking a joke about World Press Freedom day.
A few months later, he also sentenced to death 188 people, Clooney said, “in one mass trial which didn’t distinguish between each defendant’s criminal responsibility”.
At the trio’s appeal on New Year’s Day, a new judge refused to throw out the case, but agreed to a retrial, after recognising problems with the initial process.
As a result, Clooney has concluded “that we have to continue and double our efforts to achieve his release in other ways".
"Unfortunately we have to conclude that we can’t rely on these Egyptian court processes to achieve a fair or swift result,” she said.